Today, there is a flurry of rumors about Amazon introducing a new device…as soon as tomorrow local time (Tuesday, May 9th).

My sense on this is that this could really happen…a leak before a release is not unprecedented.

The rumors (and there are more than one) include that it will be capable of making phone calls.

We need to know more about the implementation, but there are some interesting possibilities.

One obvious question: does it need to use your phone?

If it’s working over wi-fi, no. It could use VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol). That doesn’t mean it’s free, necessarily.

If it is using your phone, then it wouldn’t cost any more to you.

So, why would somebody need this? What’s the advantage over a tablet or laptop?

Alexa is about voice, so you’d have to guess that would be part of it. “Alexa, call my veterinarian’s office”. How is that better than your phone?

I would use it, sure. I don’t walk around my house with my phone, although many people do. I could do a lot of what I do with our Echos on my phone…hey, I can use Alexa on my phone, for that matter (using the Amazon shopping app).

It’s just easier to just “talk to the air” and have stuff happen. 🙂

The biggest advantage for me would be for it to a super speakerphone…making calls is one thing, but receiving them and having the voice heard easily by multiple people in the room…that’s another whole level.

None of that requires a screen.

The screen could do videocalls…that might be nice.

The screen, though, could also show us information.

Alexa currently sends “cards” to my phone and can send them to a tablet…it can show information on our Fire TVs, too.

The screen might be a better form factor…larger, without being too large.

My guess is that the device will also have a camera. That camera could be for videocalls…but it could also be for augmented reality. 🙂 I know I’ve been harping on that for Amazon, and I wouldn’t really expect it at launch, but it could happen in the not too distant future.

For example, it could do a “magic mirror” thing, like the Face app or PhotoLab. It could morph you into an older version of yourself, or give you cat ears.

It could show you an Amazon product and combine it with your actual room. That would get us towards my 2016 April Fool’s Day post:

It’s going on that long in part so that it covers the actual 40th anniversary of Star Wars (of the release in the USA) on May 25th 2017. Also, this book, which has good reviews and is new, is $14.99 in the Kindle edition…which is a lot for me for a giveaway. 🙂

There was a rumor that Amazon was no longer supporting the original and second generation Kindles…that they could no longer be registered, meaning that if you reset one to factory defaults, you couldn’t register it again.

When I saw the story at first, I thought it might be possible, but it seemed unlikely. I was guessing there might be some confusion with the update that was required last year to keep accessing some things:

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

Amazon Flex drivers, who are sort of like Uber drivers for Amazon packages, have been asked about an opportunity to deliver a new, secret product from midnight to 2:00 AM this upcoming Sunday (July 31st).

Fascinating!

First, this does appear to be a physical item, obviously…a digital item wouldn’t require drivers.

Could it be an Amazon device…maybe the rumored color Kindle EBR (E-Book Reader…not with a backlight, like a tablet or a phone)?

That is a possibility, although Amazon usually does pre-orders on something like that . They could, though, do a limited, first come , first served sort of thing…maybe limited to Prime members, maybe even only on a limited special offer on Fire devices.

If that group was sort of like a “beta” group, seen as doing the testing, that might mitigate the bad feeling some people had about the Amazon Echo roll-out, where some customers who ordered it waited months.

If it’s a new Amazon device, I could see it being an augmented or Virtual Reality headset…I’ve speculated about that before. If it tied into Pokémon Go, that could get a lot of publicity.

I find it unlikely that it would be an EBR or a tablet…they have had a way of doing those before, and this isn’t it.

I would guess it is something technologically complex, that will have a non-Amazon supply chain, where Amazon wants feedback before a general release.

Is there a non-Amazon item it could be?

I can’t think of anything big enough…hm, Microsoft Hololens?

What do you think? What will be this “secret product” (if it reallv happens…intuition is that it will) be?

Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help! By the way, it’s been interesting lately to see Amazon remind me to “start at AmazonSmile” if I check a link on the original Amazon site. I do buy from AmazonSmile, but I have a lot of stored links I use to check for things.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

The obvious question: why introduce a color EBR when you already have a color reading device?

Well, EBRs usually have some real advantages over backlit tablets, the two biggest ones being perhaps the much, much longer battery charge life and the ability to read it in bright sunlight. An EBR with equivalent colors to a backlit tablet, but with the performance capabilities of a Kindle, would be a big hit…provided the price was acceptable to consumers.

Aye, there’s the rub!

The ability to produce some sort of color EBR has been around for years, but nobody has done it successfully in the market.

I would buy it, partially to be able to write about it for you…but I’d also be curious about it myself! I’m looking forward to getting the

which has audio via Bluetooth, restoring text-to-speech to a current model Amazon EBR. I’m expecting to write about it before Monday (should be in my hands Friday). I’m assuming new models will have that capability as well.

I haven’t bought the Oasis, because you can’t buy it without an animal leather cover at this point, as I wrote about here:

The Oasis is number #41 on the Amazon devices list…it had done well initially, but it looks like demand might have slackened. It’s possible that the market for a nearly $300 EBR just wasn’t that big.

That’s going to be the key for a new color Kindle, if Amazon does introduce one: the price.

If the color Kindle is close to an equivalent grayscale Kindle, I think people will pay the difference for the most part. If not…

What is “close to” specifically? I thought I’d get a sense of that from you. In this poll, assume everything else is pretty much the same (including battery charge life, which would be quite a technical accomplishment).

Again, this is only a rumor. However, Good E-Reader is more tied into the European market than I am, and Liquavista was a Dutch company, so they could have good sources on this. My intuition is that they are probably right, although not necessarily this year (even though that would be good timing, and seems more probable than waiting for next year).

What do you think? Would you care about a color EBR? What makes that attractive to you? What if the color was muted compared to a Fire tablet? What if it cut battery charge life down to, oh, a week (at an hour reading a day)? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help! By the way, it’s been interesting lately to see Amazon remind me to “start at AmazonSmile” if I check a link on the original Amazon site. I do buy from AmazonSmile, but I have a lot of stored links I use to check for things.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

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